Recently, I discovered something that others have known for a while but many don’t know. Namely that effectively all modern cars that say they should use Premium (high-octane) gasoline run perfectly fine on regular. Since the early 90s, cars have had more advanced carb/fuel-injector systems which adjust to the octane of the gas and don’t knock. Like an idiot, I’ve been filling my car with premium. The engineers at all the major car vendors have confirmed this.

I worked out that since the USA uses 370 million gallons of gas a day, or 135 billion per year, at 12% premium sales, that’s 16 billion gallons of premium sold, almost none of it needed. Call it 15B gallons. At a surcharge of 20 to 30 cents/gallon that’s over 3 billion extra dollars charged to no purpose in the USA, and presumably another 3 billion outside (though perhaps they buy less hi-test outside.) The USA uses about 44% of world gasoline.

So why do many cars come with a line in the owner’s manual saying to use premium gasoline? Turns out the marketing departments believe customers of higher-end cars are ethralled by horsepower. They want to advertise the highest peak horsepower number they can. And you can deliver a slightly higher peak horsepower on higher octane. Nothing so big that you would notice it outside of extreme driving conditions or pro racing, but you can publish a higher number. So long as you spec the car as using premium.

So to satisfy these marketing numbers, the world is spending about 6 billion extra bucks each year on high octane fuel. And I’m not even considering all the extra infrastructure required (fancier pumps and blending systems, more tanks with risk to leak into the ground etc.)

Many people think high-octane gasoline is “more powerful.” In fact, oddly, the octane rating measures how non-explosive the fuel is. The higher the octane, the less likely it will explode under pressure. People think of high-octane fuel as more powerful because with high octane fuel, you can design a higher performance car that works at higher compression, safe in the knowledge you won’t get explosions from anything but the spark plug, ie. knocking. The fuel is not higher power, it’s the engine, which is why putting premium into a regular car is a waste unless it’s knocking. Lead cheaply reduces knocking at low pressure which is why they used to add it until they realized, “holy crap, we’re filling our fuel with toxic lead!”

There is still controversy over whether high-compression engines get better mileage than when they run at lower compression with regular.

What a scam. Spread the word.

Klein Gilhousen, one of the founders of Qualcomm, proposed this evening at Gilder’s Telecosm that cell phones be modified, if an emergency shuts down the towers, to do some basic mesh networking, not so much for voice, but for text messaging and perhaps pust-to-talk voice packets, as well as location information from their internal GPS if present.

Thus, in New Orleans, everybody would have been able to text in and out, at a battery cost to those who relay the messages to the working cell towers. Texting doesn’t require continuous connectivity. In time, of course, towers would be repaired or they could be flow in on blimps or choppers.

I suggested that in fact this could be a commercially viable service, allowing people to text who are beyond the range of cell towers, possibly quite a bit beyond the range. Operators could still charge for this. (Others, more cynical, felt operators would never want stuff in phones that made them usable without the carrier.)

He also suggested some simple improvements. During Katrina, people who did get their cell phones out of town could not make calls because the databases that let them roam were “under water.” The databases need to be backed up, or more simply during an emergency, switch so that unknown phones are allowed to make calls if their home system does not response, rather than blocking them.

This requires hardware mods, unfortunately (phones today can’t transmit and receive on the same bands) but otherwise is easy and could keep comms up in an emergency. A number of other cheap devices can keep power to phones.

Another person suggested phones have an ELT-like mode, where a person can enter a text message of the SOS form. Messages might indicate if the person is just advertising their location, or needs urgent help. Helicopters flying overhead could identify the phones, triangulate on them and locate all mobile owners who need rescue.

At every conference I go to, with a few rare exceptions, we always see people wasting time fiddling with computers and projectors in order to show their presentation, which is (sadly) almost always in powerpoint. Many laptops won’t switch displays until they see a monitor on the VGA port, which makes things take longer.

So how about a wireless protocol for sending presentations from laptops to projectors or a computer connected to the projector. Over 802.11 or bluetooth, presumably.

Of course, if the presentation is powerpoint or other popular slideshow format, all this needs is a way to transmit the file, and then the control keystrokes. There are already protocols to do this for teleconferneces, where people in another city are watching the slides on their own computer, but I have not yet seen this used at a conference. There could also be a video protocol where the laptop screen is mirrored to the projector through an efficient screen transfer system. These already exist and are free (VNC, for example) but they could be improved by pre-sending the next slide, if it’s static, for instant transition. Fancy animations (which are a curse anywhere) and videos would be a bit slower but should be fine over a good network.

An authentication protocol would be needed, the speakers would get a passcode for access.

Of course, this can also be sped up if speakers are told to set up their laptop in advance, while the prior speaker is speaking, with a good video switch that simulates a monitor so the laptop can be put into external mode. With a wireless protocol, some advance setup would be needed but it need not be on the stage.

In recent times, I and my colleagues at the Foresight Nanotech Institute have moved towards discouraging the idea of self-replicating machines as part of molecular nanotech. Eric Drexler, founder of the institute, described these machines in his seminal work “Engines of Creation,” while also warning about the major dangers that could result from that approach.

Recently, dining with Ray Kurzweil on the release of his new book The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology, he expressed the concern that the move away from self-replicating assemblers was largely political, and they would still be needed as a defence against malevolent self-replicating nanopathogens.

I understand the cynicism here, because the political case is compelling. Self-replicators are frightening, especially to people who get their introduction to them via fiction like Michael Chrichton’s “Prey.” But in fact we were frightened of the risks from the start. Self replication is an obvious model to present, both when first thinking about nanomachines, and in showing the parallels between them and living cells, which are of course self-replicating nanomachines.

The movement away from them however, has solid engineering reasons behind it, as well as safety reasons. Life has not always picked the most efficient path to a result, just the one that is sufficient to outcompete the others. In fact, red blood cells are not self-replicating. Instead, the marrow contains the engines that make red blood cells and send them out into the body to do their simple job.

Read on  read more »

Many are commenting on the gasoline shortages and price increases involved with hurricane evacuation and other emergencies. Some people can’t get gas to get out of the city. Others full up giant tanks even when they don’t need it. Stations raise prices as supply drops and demand increases, as per the normal rules of the market. Some suggest the stations be price-controlled to stop this, but that would only result in even more gas hoarding by the public.

The government could instead have a strategic emergency gasoline reserve. However, it need not keep this reserve in tanks, it could “keep” it in the storage tanks of all the private gas stations, by arranging a special emergency-based futures contract with the station owners, in advance. Not all stations need participate, as long as enough gas for evacuation can be reserved.

During the emergency, it would be calculated how much fuel will be needed per vehicle. Each station would provide that much fuel to each vehicle. The simplest way to do this is to devise some long-lasting mark that will last at least a few days to a week, and for each station to put it on a car after delivering the fuel. Perhaps something as simple as a sharpie mark or other semi-permanent mark on the gas cap. This is unfair in that people with multiple cars could get extra fuel, but other systems, like vouchers and databases have their own problems. Vouchers would be lost or sold on the black market, unfortunately.

Any fuel over and above the contracted amount could be sold at market prices to those who want more fuel and/or wish to hoard. Probably quite high market prices. Fuel tankers could also be arranged to resupply stations with emergency reserve needs. Note that the customers could still pay a normal price for the reserve gas, reducing the cost of the contract. They would also sign a voucher at the station, on which random audits could later be done to confirm compliance. Stations would contract to deliver based on the minimum reserve they keep in their own tanks. There could also be a true reserve in government owned tankers to cover the slop factor.

The reason that eBay paid such a huge price for Skype has now become clear. There were several companies competing to buy Skype, and just before the bidding closed, eBay decided the best way to win was to place a giant bid just a few seconds before the end. (This might be known as bid skyping.)

On a serious note, it has long been eBay policy, it is reported, to not want to facilitate communications between buyers and sellers, because they will just arrange to avoid eBay fees by selling outside eBay. Either this has changed, or the “obvious” parts of the plan — Skype presence on eBay auctions, “Skype the seller” buttons and so on, are not part of the value for eBay.

When I left high school, I didn’t look back. I have a few friends from HS, but mostly I found many more like minded people in university. That seems to be a male trait, in that more women seem to keep a circle of friends from HS than men do, but for those that find themselves at university, this is where the social circle that may stay with us our entire lives is formed.

However, today, university frosh, both male and female, and keeping in constant touch with their HS friends via instant messaging and VoIP. They don’t remove you from their buddy list because you went to different schools. This means they are keeping more and closer friends from their HS days and also are more in touch with life at other universities.

I expect this will have far reaching consequences, not all predictable today. To how people live their lives, how they socialize and go on vacations, and how aware they are of the world outside their new university life. With buddy list presence, these remote friends are gaining an intimacy in some ways higher that we used to give to local friends.

Attending a convention in the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) I found one thing very surprising. The show organizer had to install wireless APs all around the building on poles, with long wires leading to power and ethernet. How can a new convention center not already be set up for wireless? I will admit, in some ways it is correct to anticipate that the radios that would do the work will be quickly obsolete, and thus should not be so permanently installed, but it seems crazy to me that a new CC would not have been built with spaces in the ceilings or upper walls ready for some sort of wireless network.

The meeting room halls also don’t have tons of power jacks in the floors. Today, at modern conventions, everybody brings laptops and they want to plug them in. Better conventions in older halls run extension cords and power strips, and there are a few of those here, but why should a new convention center not be ready to go?

Here at the VON conference, there’s lots of talk about numbering. While SIP had a dream of calling people using an E-mail address, the market has delivered devices with numeric keypads only, particularly in the mobile space. So nobody uses SIP URLs or domain names of any kind, and everybody worries about mapping to and from numbers. (Another thing Skype mostly ignored.) The regulators try to regulate VoIP by claiming they have the power when it makes calls to and from the legacy PSTN with its numbers.

But here’s something I learned putting out my free phone at Burning Man. Most of the people said, “I don’t know any of my friends’ numbers!” They did not have their cell phones or PDAs on them. The new generation of phone users is treating numbers as a one-time thing, to enter into the speed dial and forget. They know their own number, and perhaps a few other people, as well as their parents.

However, they do know how to TXT on a numeric keypad. So it makes me wonder, at least for the new generation, if the fuss about numbers is worth anything. What if we did switch back to names or SIP URLs (with short domains) and expected people to use various accelerated typing systems to enter numbers for the first time, and then have the phone remember after that.

One could easily create a service with an 800 number that let people dial it and then use digits to type in a SIP URL or e-mail address and connect to that person when not on their main phone. This is actually better, since even though it’s longer to type, it’s possible to remember it. On VOIP phones and Cell phones and smarter PSTN phones, people would switch to the names or speed dial. And the phone number would die the death it deserves.

More from VON later. VoIP is beyond heating up. As one speaker indicated, it’s past the tipping point. Its dominance over the PSTN is now assured. The only question is when it flips. People say things like, “And when the PSTN dies” here and nobody blinks. Though the regulators, pushed by the legacy lobby, still say things that make me throw my hands up in disgust. I asked Senator Sununu today if Congress had ever looked back and said, “I wish we had protected the legacy systems more?” To be fair, he’s one of the better members of congress on these issues.

Follow-up: Later at the conference, during the concert by Huey Lewis & the News, I thought it would be a nice romantic gesture to call home during his song “The Power of Love.” I suggested that to a friend whose cell phone battery had died and said she could use my phone. “I don’t know my boyfriend’s number. I am not even sure of the area code,” she said. Meanwhile others took cameraphone pictures of the performance and send them along with texted captions in similar romantic gestures. Mr. Lewis even took a cell phone from the audience and sang into it for whoever was on the other end.

In addition to the EFF party, here are some upcoming conferences I will be attending and/or speaking at:

• Sunday, a half-day at Accelerating Change 2005, Stanford

• Monday, Sept 19th at 10pm, panel on CALEA Wiretap rules for VoIP, at Pulver Voice on the Net conference in Boston at The BCEC (not Hynes as I reported earlier) Convention Center. I’ll be at the conference for most of the week.

• Friday Sept 23, I’ll be going with Kathryn for Ray Kurzweil’s talk on his new book, The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology, which Kathryn worked on. The talk is for the Long Now Foundation, at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. He’s doing many talks on a long book tour.

• We’ll be at George Gilder’s Telecosm at Lake Taho on the 26th.

• EFF Party, of course, on the 2nd of October

• Keynoting the AUUG Linux conference, in Sydney, Australia, on Oct 19th

• Back for Foresight Nanotech’s annual conference on the 22nd of October. (I’m on the board) At the San Francisco Airport Marriott.

Join us for a party.

When:  Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 5 p.m.

Where:  EFF Headquarters in San Francisco, 454 Shotwell Street, 94110

EFF is 15 years old this year, and we are going to celebrate! We’re having an anniversary bash at our San Francisco headquarters on Shotwell Street on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005. The party starts at 5 p.m.

Join us for delicious Mexican food and drinks from Pancho Villa, hear a special address from our founders, John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, taste our special 3D cake, and enjoy both the grooves of Gypsy Jazz from the Zegnotronic Rocket Society, and the hypnotic beats of DJ Ripley and Kid Kameleon.

Our celebration is free of charge and open to anyone, so bring your friends and family. We look forward to celebrating with you!

Please let us know you’re coming so we don’t run out of food and libations! Send an email to rsvp at eff.org, or call 415-436-9333 x129.

EFF’s office is located at 454 Shotwell Street and is BART accessible. Take BART to 16th and Mission, walk to 19th street and take a left, and take another left on Shotwell Street, three blocks down. We are located
between 18th and 19th on Shotwell.

Every time I take an RV trip (ie. each Burning Man) I come up with more observations. The biggest one is that it cost $360 in gasoline to go from the bay area to the black rock desert, about 800 miles. And that’s at a price still well below world price. The RV owner said he was planning to get out of the business, people no longer want to pay the gas price.

So why is it taking so long to produce a hybrid RV? Hybrid cars are great of course, but trucks and RVs are what really suck gas and need the improved efficiency. And they have the room for larger and more unusual engine configurations. Most of all, RVs also mostly come with expensive generators and batteries, and a hybrid RV would of course have a super duper power plant and batteries and inverters, presuming the engine was efficient at lower revs. The Hybrid RV’s power plant could also be a backup generator when parked at the non-moving home. Probably make the most sense with diesel fuel, or as I have suggested before, even the highly efficient stirling engine. (Stirlings are big, and take time to warm up, but an RV with batteries is fine with this.)

Every RV’s shower has this hose based showerhead with an on-off dial with a slight leak. Our camp built a much nicer shower using a standard kitchen sprayer. A kitchen sprayer with a lock-on would be much better and would make it easier to conserve water by letting you pulse water where you need it when rinsing.

Cleaning the RV, especially when back from the desert, is hard. RV renters charge fat cleaning deposits and fees. Why doesn’t some company that hires out housekeepers do an RV service. You could come to them. Drive in, and a team of 5 attacks your RV, cleaning it in minutes. Do it at a car wash to also handle the outside if needed. Espcially after Burning Man there’s a business here.

I’ve said these before: Paper towel racks, built-in soap dispensers, inverters, flourescent lights. Why aren’t these everywhere in the RV world, instead of being rare?

Stabilizers jacks are great, but how about something simpler, some way to lock the springs or shocks (of course with an interlock to prevent starting the vehicle!) And while slide-outs are great, why do we never see flip out beds the way pop-top campers have, or a pop-up on the cab-over bed? (Most RVs don’t have any spare wall space except in the master bedroom, which does limit the flip-out bed concept. You also almost never see murphy beds.) Flip-out beds don’t take away your dinette or couch as do the extra beds commonly found. And how about a seat belt design for use on the beds for safe sleeping while driving? You can do this now but it doesn’t seem super safe.

If you noticed a long break in the blogging, it’s because I was at Burning Man. And while people do blog from Burning Man, it’s not what you want to spend your time doing. I will have more entries in the future, but let me relate some stories of the network and the phone booth first.

Last year, we erected a free phone booth in the desert to great results. This year, it was going to be even better because of a plan for a new internet connection. In the past, John Gilmore had brought his satellite dish, which had all the latency and bandwidth limits of satellite. This year he splurged on getting a microwave link in, which will be even faster next year. Sadly, much of that money was wasted because we never got the “first mile” — the on-playa 802.11 network — operating at a satisfactory level. There was huge packet loss and jitter in most places, when it was up at all. Next time some of the money will go into better equipment and planning for the local network.

As such, the phone booth, located in our camp on 7:30, only worked intermittently and rarely with great voice quality. We eventually decided to sacrifice the aesthetic purity of a booth sitting in the desert, connected to nothing, and moved it on its wagon by trike to the center camp, home of the incoming microwave link. The we set it up on the street, with an ethernet wire snaking in. We were no longer wireless, but the voice quality was top notch. I wasn’t able to spend much time with it but reports were that the line got very long at times.

In our own camp, you could tell if it was working or not based on whether there was a line. Even waiting for it to work was better than the 2-3 hour time investment of taking the bus to the phone booth in Gerlach.

Last year, I recounted the emotional experience people had using an unexpected and impossible phone to hear the voices of loved ones. This year, this was magnified by Katrina. I learned of Katrina, in fact, when people came to ask to use the phone to contact their relatives in NOLA. (Read on…)  read more »